


Solace

by kosmickway (KMDWriterGrl)



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 10:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KMDWriterGrl/pseuds/kosmickway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post-ep for "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen." In the wake of the shooting, CJ tries to piece together what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solace

 

CJ’s tried-and-true “I’m fine, don’t worry about me” expression is humiliatingly undermined when she steps out of the ER with Sam into a waiting room of anxious White House staffers and her legs abruptly buckle. 

Sam’s focus is on a red-eyed Donna and his preoccupation renders him incapable of latching onto CJ’s arm. It’s Leo who vaults up from his place beside Zoey Bartlett and leads her to a chair.

“Easy.” He lays a hand on her shoulder. “Take your time.”

Her head is swimming, full of noise and glass and terror. Josh’s bleeding body on the steps is running on repeat and nausea is building in her stomach in response. Leo’s saying something, she has no idea what. Donna’s anxious voice blends with Sam and Charlie’s and-- God, is Abby Bartlett out here? Then there’s one voice through the muddle and it’s gruff and familiar and offering her water. 

Toby’s face slides in to her field of vision as he kneels in front of her. He looks troubled but it’s a more pronounced expression of tension and worry than his multi-purpose “this is hell and I’m in it” look. 

“–sip it slowly,” he’s saying and she returns with a jolt. She takes the paper cone of water, shaking so badly that she spills half of it down her blouse. Toby’s fingers come up to cover hers, steadying her hand. 

Sam’s explaining Josh’s condition to the others but she can’t add to it because she doesn't trust her voice. 

“Did they check you out?” Toby is asking. “Are you hurt? Your head--”

“No– they were so– with Josh– I’m not–“ She looks at her hands and forearms, really sees for the first time the blood on her hands and the scrapes and tears on her skin. Pain from blooming bruises is starting to register. 

He rises, moves away for a moment and she finds her mind wandering, seeing the shooting behind her eyes, feeling the fall to the ground, the pain of glass slicing, re-living the frightful moment when no one could tell her whether or not the president was dead.

“CJ, let’s go in here.” Abby Bartlett’s voice comes from nearby. Toby’s hand is on her arm– she knows it’s him because no one else radiates heat like he does. Then she’s in a quieter room that’s darker and cooler without so many tense, heated bodies. 

“What hurts?” Abby asks, pulling on gloves. CJ laughs a little at that because now that she’s paying attention, everything hurts. “Sam said you hit your head.”

“Yeah– I think. Toby, is there a chair behind me?”

“No. Should there be?”

“I think I might need one.” She sends up silent thanks that Toby doesn’t panic but merely takes her weight when she leans into him and helps her into a chair. 

“Are you dizzy?” Abby’s asking. “Nauseated, short of breath, having tunnel vision?”

“Yes, all of that.” She brings a hand to her neck which, she’s just noticed, is stinging and bleeding.

“You're having a vasovagal reaction,” Abby explains, pressing CJ’s head down toward her knees. “It’s caused by shock and trauma. Take deep slow breaths and get some air in your lungs.” There’s a plasticky crackle and something icy settles on her neck. “Hold that there, Toby.”

She starts to come back as Abby tends her lacerations and scrapes, even finding some humor in the image of Toby as nurse-maid. She’s deeply grateful that he’s stayed, and that he doesn’t attempt to fuss over her. She’s not embarrassed to show pain or emotional upset in front of him because she knows he’ll never use it as currency. She’s glad that it's he, rather than Sam or Donna or Leo, who is sitting quietly by her in an uncomfortable hospital chair because he’ll know, by virtue of their long friendship, exactly what she needs to get through this.

 ***

Toby drives her back to the White House, quickly pow-wows with her over the wording of the press briefing she’ll have to give immediately. He even watches from the doorway as she stands in front of the cameras and makes a statement, something he rarely does because he typically has too much else to do. 

But he stays at the door during this briefing, gives her a nod of approval when it’s done, and turns a blind eye to Danny Concannon, who comes running after her, pushing her for an answer as to who, currently, is in charge of the country while the president is under general anesthetic.

Despite her insistence that they are not dating, CJ feels as though she’s been kicked in the stomach when Danny doesn’t bother to ask if she is okay. Maybe it’s because of the boundaries she’s tried to set between them; maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to bring up what is most definitely a delicate subject for CJ at that moment– either way, Danny doesn’t inquire about her emotional state in the aftermath of the shooting and it rocks CJ to the core. Sitting in her office after talking with Danny, her hands still shaking from emotional aftershocks, she admits to herself that she wants nothing more than to go home and curl up in bed, preferably with someone’s arms around her.

There is no going home, though. She is the White House Press Secretary and she must carry out the briefings. So she straightens, drinks some water, and steps out of her office and into the press room.

At 1:30am, she follows up her 12:00am briefing with assurances that the President is recovering at GW and reports that Josh Lyman, Deputy Chief of Staff, is in critical condition and in surgery. Though she is only in front of the cameras for 15 minutes, she calls Sam at the hospital immediately afterward to make sure Josh’s condition hasn’t changed. 

At 2:18am she receives the earliest reports from officers and agents at the scene of the shooting. Reading about it dredges memories to the surface– Josh, his bloody chest, the shattered glass on the pavement. She closes the door to her office so that no one will see her as she leans over her desk and, for a few fraught moments, hyperventilates.

  At 3:55, the word comes that Josh is out of danger but still in surgery. She passes it along to everyone in the bullpen, parcels out the news at her next briefing at 4:15am, along with reports that the President is continuing to recover. She fields questions about protection procedures, reports names of the bystanders who were also injured, sends Sam out to do the morning news shows. Danny catches her in the hallway outside the press room and pushes her again for answers that she can’t give. He still doesn’t ask how she is. 

5:30am. The missing man on the ground has been found and neutralized. She reports it at the next briefing, which she keeps short and simple because the networks are reporting that she looks shaken. She fully expects Toby to have a fit about that but he doesn't. Instead they have a quick, wordless conversation with their eyes: "You okay?" "Yeah." "You sure?" "More or less" before going back to their own separate offices. 

7:00am. The morning shows release video footage of the shooting cobbled from the camera phones of bystanders along the rope line. CJ watches “The Today Show” air the footage, then has to dash for the ladies room when she is overtaken with a sudden fit of dry heaving. She splashes water on her burning face and walks into Toby’s office, where she sinks onto the couch and tries to gather herself. He watches her silently for a minute then comes around to sit next to her on the sofa. He presses her hand gently. "Leo sent Sam home for a nap and a shower. Three more hours and it’s your turn." He doesn't ask if he can make it that long--he knows she can and will; instead he lightly touches the inside of her wrist, grazing her pulse point with his fingers, managing to convey all his concern in the simple gesture. 

“I can make it,” she says (even though he hasn't asked) and hauls herself to her feet and back to her office. 

She barely has a moment to herself before Danny is knocking on her door. 

“CJ, I owe you an apology.”

“For?” She brushes back a strand of hair and comes to the sudden realization that there is not only dried blood in her hair but some fresh as well from cuts opened by her fit of dry heaving. 

“God, you’re bleeding.” Danny’s in her personal space and his hands are on the side of her face and sliding into her hair almost before she has time to process it. “Jesus, CJ, you should be in the hospital, not in the press room–“

”I’m okay. They checked me out. Scalp injuries bleed a lot." She tries to bat his hand away but the gesture exhausts her so she just rests her hand on his wrist instead.

“Abby Bartlett checked you out.” At her startled glance he laughs. “Yeah, you weren't going to bug the GW ER staff about your head wound when the President and the Deputy Chief of Staff had both been shot...which was a stupid thing to do by the way. And even if they had wanted to check you, you wouldn’t have let them because you wanted their focus elsewhere and not on you. Am I right or totally off base?”

“Frighteningly on base.” 

“But a medic at the scene checked you over at least?” Danny pulls away from her and begins to pace around her office.

“Yes. I’m okay.”

“That’s another point of debate entirely.” There is silence as Danny paces and CJ follows him with tired eyes. “Can you, I don’t know, sit down or something before you fall down? You look like--”

“Someone who witnessed the near-assassination of the leader of the free world and had a couple of bullets come her way in the bargain?”

“Yeah, that about covers it.” Danny moves to sit down on the couch and pulls her with him. “Look, I’m sorry, CJ, for pushing so hard about the Vice President. For not asking how you were as soon as I saw you. I just– the idea of you being shot or killed– if I’d tried to talk to you like this just then–“ He runs a hand over his face and sighs hugely. “I couldn't have done it. It was too overwhelming. It would have been all over my face. Look, all I wanted was to hold you and not let go and, to tell you the truth, I'' still feeling that way.” He touches her cheek. His fingers are trembling. “I am SO damn glad you’re okay.”

“Me, too.” And then she’s buried in his arms, on the receiving end of an embrace that would be painful if it didn’t feel so damn necessary and life-affirming. She leans her aching head on his shoulder and breathes in his cologne, feels his hands tracing circles on her back. She lets herself relax and sink into him. “I was so scared, Danny. I still am. I keep seeing Josh–“

”I know.” His hands continue moving across her back, slowly, tenderly. “It’s impossible not to keep seeing it, hearing it. It won't go away easily.” He pulls back and lightly cups her face in his hands. “But it will go away.” His lips brush hers, easy, soft. “Trust me?”

She laughs unsteadily. “I trust you not to grill me any harder until I’ve had some sleep.”

“Yeah, why hasn't someone sent you home yet?”

“I'll go when Sam comes back. Three hours.”

Danny, bless him, doesn’t ask if she can do three hours. He just nods. “I finish up then too.”

“No, you don’t! You’re not done until—“ She squints at the clock and sighs tiredly. “Is that AM or PM?”

“You really want to know?” Danny catches her hand in his. “Let me drive you home.”

“You don’t have to–“

”Actually, I do.”

CJ rubs the side of her neck, which is starting to sting again. “Okay. Sure. In three hours.”

“Good.” Danny rises, pulls her to her feet. “See you in the press room.”

 ***

She’s sleepwalking by the time 10am rolls around. Three-quarters of the senior staff is at the hospital waiting to see Josh and the President. Toby is closeted in his office, writing statement after statement. She meets Danny in the press room and they walk out together, CJ automatically scanning her surroundings. A car back-fires on the street and she nearly jumps out of her skin. 

She falls asleep in the car. She remembers giving Danny her address, laying her head back on the headrest for a moment, and then waking with a start to Danny patiently saying her name. 

“Oh, god, Danny, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean--”

“It’s okay. I'll walk you up." He comes around to open her door for her. 

Climbing the steps up to CJ’s town house feels like climbing Everest. Once at the top, she has a humiliatingly uncoordinated moment with her keys. The longer she struggles to fit the cantankerous bit of metal in the lock, the more conscious she is of the buildings around her and the more paranoid she feels about sniper’s bullets to the back. She fumbles frantically, before allowing Danny to take her keys and work the door. 

“No one knows where you live. Don’t worry.”

“That phrase has so little meaning to me right now.”

In the foyer, Danny stops. “Listen. At the risk of being ungentlemanly, and taking into consideration that we’ve engaged in exactly ten kisses and a business dinner, and taking into further consideration that we’ve been at each other’s throats for the past two weeks, I’m still going to ask if you want me to–“

“Yes.”

Danny blinks. "Do you even know what I’m about to ask?”

“Yes, I want you to stay. It would make me feel better.”

“Yeah?” Danny smiles delightedly. He steps closer and slides his hand around the back of her neck. 

“Yeah.” CJ shuts her eyes and leans against his hand. “No sex.”

Danny laughs softly. “That’s a given.”

“What, you don’t want to have sex with me?”

“I do and you know that. But we’re not having sex until you’re fully conscious, uninjured, and able to savor every minute.”

“Promises, promises.” CJ starts for the stairs. “You coming?”

“Oh, you could say that.”    

 ***

Danny’s gentle with her in all of the ways that matter. He has cultivated the fine skill of handling without making her feel like she’s being handled. He helps her wash the blood from her hair, rubs Tiger Balm into her aching back, coaxes her into swallowing several Advil and half a bottle of water, draws the shades against the weak light of an overcast day, and tucks her into her own bed. When she’s settled, he takes off his shoes and suspenders, puts his phone on vibrate, and eases down beside her on the bed. 

“Still with me?” he asks, tracing his fingers up and down her arm. 

“Still here.” CJ twines her fingers with Danny’s. “I can't shut it off.”

“That happens.”

“An hour ago I would have been asleep on my feet if people would just stop talking to me. Now I’ve got you here in my bed and I’m wide awake.”

“I happen to know several great ways to help you fall asleep but since all of them break the ‘no sex’ rule I’m afraid you’re going to have to deal with insomnia.”

“Danny!” CJ laughs and swats at his arm, then turns onto her side to face him. “Hey. Thank you.”

“For?”

“Being here with me. I’ve done and seen a lot of things in my life, Danny, but this whole being shot at deal– brand new. I think I just need someone to steady me right now. I need a rock.”

Danny taps his chest. “Granite, baby. Doesn’t crumble.”

 

CJ does what she's wanted to do all day--she leans her head on his chest and Danny draws her in. “I’m glad.”

“I read a poem once,” Danny murmurs. “Reminds me of something you just said. Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Rock does not move/It knows its place and/is content/holding the weight of the ages. It wears away/but does not/disappear/It crumbles/but does not/break./I seek solace in rock/for it is not indecisive./ I seek solace in rock/ for it will stand.” 

  
He leans down, kisses her forehead gently. “We’re still standing.”

 

END. 


End file.
